Tag: drinking

Drinking Me Under the Table 

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“There were only two people I couldn’t drink under the table,” Ozzy Osbourne once said. “(Lead singer of Motorhead) Lemmy Kilmister and Wrestling Great Andre the Giant.”  

“I could so drink you under the table,” Angie said. 

“I’m sure you could,” I said, and I turned away to do whatever I was doing prior to her challenge. That discussion was over … for me, but our friends stared at me, waiting for me to add something to it.

Nat broke the silence, saying, “So, you’re chickening out? You’re chickening out to a drinking contest against a girl who’s … what are you Angie ninety-five pounds?” 

I would love to write, right here, that I had a clever reply or something that put me back in a position of power. I didn’t. I said something along the lines of, “Well, I’m an extremely competitive person, and a light weight. That combination often leads me to drink so much that I’ll probably do something that we will never forget.”

“Isn’t that why we’re here, my brother?” Nat said with a gleam in his eye, “to do unforgettable things?”

“I’m talking about embarrassing, sloppy drunk things, like vomiting all over this beautiful carpet of yours. If I don’t vomit, and that alcohol stays in my system, I’ll probably fall into your precious glass table, pass out in your bedroom, or proposition one of your good friends. Depending on what I end up doing, you’ll all probably have a good laugh at my expense, but I will have to live with it. Admitting that a ninety-five pound girl could probably drink me under the table is the least humiliating course for me to take here.” 

If you’ve ever seen those Old West movies where a fella backs down from a shootout, you know the eyes I saw that day, those silent, judgmental eyes. Those eyes tell us that we’re not matching up, fitting in, and we just don’t have what it takes to be a fella. There were probably four people in the room at the time, but in my memory there were at least twenty, condemning me for my weaknesses. Even in the moment I knew that those judgmental eyes were much better than the eyes I would’ve received after that drinking contest, and all the things I would’ve said and done with massive amounts of alcohol unlocking them. “That man cannot handle his alcohol,” would’ve been the refrain they shared at work that Monday.   

I’m one of those guys you hate playing with or against, because I don’t play games to have fun. I play to win, and if I don’t win, I freak out. It’s childish and pathetic, and I’ve learned to control it to a degree. I no longer make a spectacle out of myself anymore, but it’s still such a part of me that if I were involved in a game of Barbies, I might try to find some way to win. 

I grew up playing every major sport except hockey, and I would throw tantrums if I lost. I’ve flipped playing boards, stormed out of rooms, and knocked something off the wall on my way out after losing games of Tiddlywinks and Chutes and Ladders. I know this about myself, and I know that if I entered into a drinking contest, a game I really don’t enjoy, I would have to win. I did it before, and if I felt some level of conquest or glory, I don’t remember it. The one time I did know the glory of victory, it was fleeting, as the embarrassment of blowing chunks across a table that sat before the couch I passed out in superseded it.   

With as much training as I put in, you’d think I would’ve developed a greater tolerance to alcohol eventually. I never did. I don’t know if the ability to drink more than others has something to do with genetics, but if it does, how  did my ancestors do? Alcohol and drinking were important when I was younger, but it was almost mandatory when they were young and kicking it. Did they avoid drinking alcohol? It might have had something to do with the pack my dad decided to run in, but when I was a kid, every adult I knew drank something. We all knew everyone’s drink of choice, because it defined them. 

Our history with alcohol is not recent, as archeologists have found evidence of humans intentionally fermenting beverages as far back as 13,000 years ago. So, somewhere just below our hierarchal need for fire, was our need to get wrecked, and sometime shortly after we experienced the euphoria of killing brain cells for the first time, someone probably challenged someone else to a test of tolerance, and the victor felt vindicated. Did this help our species evolve, or did it inhibit evolution? Who cares brutha, why you always talking such nonsense? Let’s get ripped.  

We tried –the United States, inspired by efforts in other countries tried— to curb our enthusiasm for alcohol, in a temperance movement that culminated in The Prohibition in the U.S. It failed in historic proportions, because “You can’t legislate morality.” That was the takeaway anyway, but the other takeaway might be that we love alcohol so much that we were willing to fight for it. We fought the law, and we won! We then celebrated that victory hard for nearly 100 years. (Recent polls suggest drinking alcohol is now down to 54% among young people, in favor of smoking pot.)  

TIM 

“We have food and beverages for everyone,” one of the primary organizers of our kid’s school event said after stepping to the fore, “but there is no alcohol.” The parents groaned, some sarcastically, others not, and the organizers apologized. I empathized a little, as school functions are almost always so painfully uncomfortable for parents who barely know each other that alcohol lubricates our anxiety.  

I knew that of course, but as I worked my way around the social circles of parents in attendance, I was pretty sure that the “no alcohol” complaints were nothing more than conversation starters. Some were genuinely ticked off, however, and they reminded me of the kids at my friend’s seventh birthday party. We fellow seven-year-olds knew Scott Taylor’s parents were anti-sugar, because Scott was not allowed to eat the desserts on his lunch tray, so we’d trade him for his sugary snacks. Their sugar prohibition never affected us until we attended their son’s birthday party, and we learned that everything from the candy, to the birthday cake, and ice cream at the party would all be sugar free. And it was not surprisingly good, it was gross, and we were as disappointed, angry, and ready to revolt as those adults at the alcohol-free kid’s function, which is fine when viewed through that lens, but when we flip it around and compare the adults’ reaction to the kids’ it’s illustrative.

Amidst our groans and complaints, that guy stepped forward. I’ve now been among parents at a kid functions often enough now to know they all contain that guy. That guy, in this alcohol-free production, was played by a man named Tim, and we began to view Tim as our superhero when he gathered us up and led us to his locked and loaded SUV. I didn’t hear the angels sing others swore they heard when Tim opened his hatchback to reveal three coolers. I also didn’t feel the warm, gold glow wash over me that others did when they saw the wide array of alcoholic drinks he had in them. I did find it hilarious that this forty-year-old man was so prepared for the administrator’s alcohol restriction that he loaded up his car before leaving home. Even though I wasn’t seeking alcohol as much as the other parents, I enjoyed being included in Tim’s select group.

I felt naughty too. I felt like a naughty teen sneaking hootch into the high school dance. I felt twenty years younger, and I must admit that when I mixed Tim’s naughtiness with the organizer’s lime-aid, it tasted so much better for all of those wrong reasons. It felt like we were undermining authority and challenging the establishment. The first sip tasted dangerous, and the second one had a shot of humor in it, but every drink after that tasted a little foolish. We were forty-year-olds at our kid’s function. What were they going to do to us if they caught us? Their best punishment, I decided, would involve them reminding us that we were forty-year-olds at a kid’s function. 

What the administrators didn’t understand was that alcohol was never just a rite of passage for us, it was the reason to get together. Once we got together in that “Event of the week” there was always one party goer who drank responsibly. They drank in moderation. I met one woman who managed to milk a hard seltzer for two hours. When she was “done” she had a fourth of a bottle left. I’m a little embarrassed to write these lines now, but I thought there was something wrong with her. I thought she didn’t know how to live. We were entertaining, healthy, and young people, why wouldn’t she want to maximize all that while it lasts? “Don’t you want to have fun?” I asked her. “I mean c’mon.” She was an attractive, but I could’ve never imagined a relationship with her or anyone else who was alcohol-free.

The Definition of Drinking  

We defined ourselves in drinking contests and games to try to outdo each other in the ancient tests of tolerance. Our definition of victory involved leaving our opponent so incapacitated that they lost control of their functions, fell off a chair, and ended up under the table. “Huzzah!” we shouted in unison, when the defeated vomited little orange pellets across the floor.

“I think it was cereal,” Patrick said.

“Yeah, those little pellets were tiny marshmallows,” Brian responded. “I think the orange coloring was whatever he drank. Wasn’t he drinking orange coolers?”    

The defeated never recovered his reputation, and the victor lived on his victory for months, as if drinking twenty beers in an hour was a physical accomplishment. It was a physical feat, but it was an unnatural one that required training, and no one wanted to watch a montage of his training exercises. No one wanted to see the man sitting quietly in his favorite Barcalounger sipping quietly between tears. We wanted to live the Bachelor Party (the 1984 film starring Tom Hanks) lifestyle, and this is how we imagined we were living.

I can’t remember all of the parties, but there were some killers. The one party I will never forget is my first adult, non-alcohol party. There were probably twenty people there, and no one was drinking. I asked where the beer was, and no one answered. I asked what was going on, and no one answered. Their silence was uncomfortable for both of us. We were in our early thirties, so we were still young enough to recover from whatever damage alcohol inflicted relatively quickly. We had no kids at the time, and a long weekend, so the idea that we were going to spend an evening around other adults talking about our day seemed inhuman to me. I realized that I didn’t like any of these people that much. We drank bottled water and other non-alcoholic refreshments, while talking about our day, as if it were a Thanksgiving Day reunion with the extended family. I hate to sound like an alcoholic, but this party was such an aberration that I talked about it for weeks. I wanted someone to back me up on what an aberration that was. I wasn’t ready to curb my enthusiasm just yet, and I couldn’t believe my friends were. I wanted to ask when the decision to go alcohol-free was made, and how come I wasn’t part of it?  

It didn’t take long for me to recognize that there was something afoot. My friends were implicitly stating that not every get-together had to involve alcohol, and that there was probably something wrong with drinking massive amounts of alcohol. Though I was a little late to this particular party, we began drawing a new demarcation line in the sand. The hilarious hyjinx of the inebriated was becoming a little sad at some point. I should’ve seen that coming, because I saw my dad get wrecked so often that it wrecked our relationship, and most of my friends saw similar things with their parents. It wrecked us to chase our parents out of bars, to hear their alcohol-induced gibberish on the ride home, and it did some lasting damage to our relationship with them when we had to put them, our parents, to bed.  

Now, we drank, and we wrecked our teens and thirties, but by the time we decided to have kids, we decided that we didn’t want to put them through the confusion and the role reversals we experienced. Our kids have never had to spend the precious hours of our childhood in a bar, bored, begging to leave. Our kids see us get together, and they see us drink a beer or two, but they don’t see their guides and role models getting hammered every weekend. 

As we criticize our parents, and their generation, however, we should note that they saw things. We led cushy, comfortable lives because of them and thanks to them. We never knew The Depression, a real war, or any of the other things that they needed to forget, and we were too young to understand the what fors. All we saw was the drinking, the laughing, the absolute blast everyone was having, and all of the connections we made. We also saw the aftereffects, the “Don’t tell anyone about this,” embarrassing aftereffects. The chasing of imaginary windmills, the crying, and their inability to climb the stairs to get into bed. How does an adult ever reclaim their rightful place atop the hierarchy of a home after their kid has to clean up their puke, wipe their tears, and fight to get them into bed? 

I could be off, but I think my generation were the pied pipers in the move away from alcohol. We give younger, twenty-somethings all of the credit for cutting ties to alcohol to 54%. They deserve some of the credit, of course, but we started to see the light and learn our own lessons, inspired by the idea that we didn’t want our kids to see us in weakened, pathetic states. Our kids never had to see us chase imaginary windmills, and they never had to sit in a sad, lonely, and pathetic dive bar begging us to leave. They didn’t have parents whose whole lives centered around alcohol.  

Minimum Weight 

Bob was an elegant drinker. He had fun, but he never made a fool out of himself, and he never had bad hangovers. He was the life of the party that I always wanted to be, but I was a sloppy drunk who could never handle his alcohol. I envied him at the time, but now that it’s all over, and we’re old, I wonder if Bob still has a problem with alcohol? My body informed me, early on, that we didn’t have either the genetic constitution, or the will to do what it took, to become a quality drinker, but he did it so well in the window in time that I knew him that I seriously wonder if he has a tough time quitting, cutting back, or leading a more responsible life?  

Bob was a fun drunk for hours. The man could drink. I was a fun drunk for a little while, but my tolerance was such that I often turned the smiling faces in the room to cringes. Bob almost single-handedly proved that when it came to drinking games and contests, it didn’t matter how much I trained, I would have to artificially reengineer my genetic chromosomes to achieve the term lightweight.

According to BoxBets.com, there are now eight weight classes listed below lightweight, including featherweight, flyweight, light flyweight, and minimum weight. In the drinking and drunk world, I would probably list myself somewhere between light flyweight and minimum weight, because I could probably handle most of the 90lb. females who’ve never had a drink, in the minimum weight class, but after witnessing my performances in those bouts, my manager would probably caution me against challenging for even that meager belt. My competitive spirit, combined with my stupidity, would have me challenging and winning that ignoble belt from a 90lb. female, but I would not do well among the 100lb., light flyweight females.  

If a genie offered me a once-in-lifetime chance to fix 100 of my flaws, moving up in weight classes would not make it on that list. I enjoyed the way alcohol allowed me to shed inhibitions, and the laughing and fun that almost always followed beer consumption, but I never really enjoyed drinking it. I might be rewriting my past, but I don’t remember wanting to become a better drinker who could outdo opponents. I viewed alcohol as a social lubricant, and I considered it an opportunity to become someone else, anyone else, someone like Tom Hanks in the Bachelor Party.

I didn’t want to be a minimum weight of course, as that has connotations to lacking masculinity, but I never wanted to do what was necessary to become a heavy weight either. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I would’ve been capable of it, as I think our constitutions are relative, based on genetics. Some of us will never be able to competitively run 26 miles, no matter how hard we train, some of us just don’t have the mental acumen necessary to compete in big-time chess matches, or the physical gifts some seem born with to dominate in fencing, and some of us have a genetic disposition that leads us to problems trying to outdrink a parakeet, no matter how hard we train.  

I was a fun drunk, but I didn’t know when to say when, because I always wanted to have more fun, and more alcohol equals more fun when you get that close to having more fun. It made sense to me when I could see the crest of the hill on the horizon, until I looked around to see the sympathetic and horrified faces informing me that I was already careening wildly down the other side of that hill.  

I silenced the room by conceding that Angie could probably drink me under the table. I damaged my man points, and there was a palpable sense that our mutual friends were embarrassed for me. They couldn’t believe that I would admit to such a thing, and they began attempting to impress each other with how much they could drink. I checked out of the conversation, because I fell for various peer pressure tactics so often in a previous life that the accumulation of decades of tiny doses of it inoculated me to immunity.

“I feel bad for people who don’t drink.” Frank Sinatra once said. “When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’ve going to feel all day.” That quote is funny in a cringey sort of way, because we all know that alcohol makes us feel better. It makes us funnier, livelier, and more social. We also become “the drunk,” which can have negative and positive connotations. In this case “the drunk” is our other persona, and who we can become with a couple of belts in our system. The problem, we realize after several attempts, is that we can never become that person. We eventually have to return to that person who isn’t that funny, social, or as lively. We also know that we will never become the celebrated drinker who puts that other guy under the table. At some point, we need to learn to say something along the lines of: “I’m going to say no to your drinking challenge, because I’m just a casual drinker who drinks for fun. I can’t handle massive amounts of alcohol.” 

Ozzy Osbourne said that he only met two guys he couldn’t put under the table, and while I would never belittle anothers’ accomplishments in life, I can’t imagine that being a note I would want that to be one of the things my family remembered about me. I had fun drinking alcohol, and I’m quite sure Ozzy, Lemmy, and The Giant had more fun than I did, but the two rock stars were informed that they wouldn’t continue to live if they continued drinking alcohol (there’s no documented evidence of such a warning issued to Andre). Ozzy eventually achieved sobriety late in life, but Lemmy refused to listen to the men in white coats. When they issued their warning, Lemmy switched from whiskey to vodka), and when they informed him that he needed to drink more water, he put an ice cube in his vodka. It’s funny, and some might raise a fist in solidarity for a man living, even in his last days, on his own terms. He openly bragged about drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels a day, and he died with one in his hand. He never apologized for his drinking habits, never quit, and he never said he regretted it. It’s not only possible it’s likely that that’s all true, and we’ve all known people like that, but I wonder if people like Lemmy, and the aforementioned Bob, knew they couldn’t continue to life with alcohol, but they couldn’t imagine life without it. 

I Love to Drink!

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“Do you love to drink?” Barry told a Pocatello, Idaho audience. “Of course you do. Everyone does. We’re not talking about Kool aid, or anything that hydrates you either. We’re talking alkie hall, girls and boys. The National Food and Nutrition Board recommends that we drink eight glasses of alcohol a day, and I think that’s a bit excessive, but I … what? Oh, they were talking about water, eight glasses of water a day. Water. Thank you for the correction.  “Eight glasses a day,” they say. “It cures what ails you.” All that. We know it, we’ve heard it, we got it. We should drink more water, we know we should, but it’s just so blah.

Now, I have had some incredible, absolutely unforgettable glasses of water, and they came out of the tap. How could a glass of tap water be so incredible that I’m still talking about twenty years later? You ever drink alcohol to excess? You ever drink so much the night before that that morning glass of water teaches you what euphoria means? You ever dehydrate your body so thoroughly that when you finally drink that glass of water, it’s … it arouses you a little? I’ve put those eight glasses down in the space of about ten minutes before, but that first glass? That first glass makes you happy you survived the night before. It’s like a reward for damaging your body. If you do it right, you can feel that first glass soothing your throat, hydrating and healing whatever ball of hell we threw into it the night before. We can feel it circumnavigating the stomach putting a cool coat on all the wounds our violent, projectile vomiting caused. Do you love to drink? Let me hear you knock one back. Let me hear that after-the-drink sigh.   

“Very few people applaud that line wildly, especially on a date. We might love to drink, but we don’t love telling people that, especially on a first date. It’s not a good look. ‘You like what you’re hearing here? I’m pretty charming, right? Enjoy it while you can, because in about a half an hour, I’m going to have trouble remembering your name, Jennniferr?’ 

“I’m not an alcoholic anymore, but I used to be (pause here) I used to be (add menacing soft chuckle that lasts a little too long). I am probably going to hit on some other girl on our way out, just so you’re prepared, and let’s see here, oh, oh and I almost forgot I’ll probably fall on someone on the way out too. I do that silly stuff like that all the time. I just fell on someone last weekend. I almost forgot about that. Yeah, he was on a date with a certain  someone he considered special, and he threatened to have me prosecuted, because he said (stifle laughter here) he said that he thought I fell on him on purpose.” Barry looked over both shoulders and leaned in to whisper to the audience, “And, just between you and me, I kind of did. That’s right, I picked out some fella who appeared to be having a very pleasant date with a polite, young woman, and I fell on him for no reason. Just to see what he’d do. It’s not funny, I know, but I wanted to hear this little feller scream a muffled scream under my shoulder as I writhed around like a turtle on its back trying to regain its footing.” Barry reenacted the effort of a turtle with its arms flailing. “I was almost blackout drunk, so that might be why I did it, but I was also so bored with everyone filing out of the comedy club single-file, like fourth graders. I wanted to see how it would affect his date’s impressions of him when she heard him scream his muffled scream. So, just to let you know, I probably have a trial date in my near future, but they got nothing on me. It was an … accident,” Barry said to the audience with an exaggerate wink. 

“That was me. I was what you would call a happy, fun drunk when I was about … your age,” Barry said, picking a random member of the audience, “but I hate the ‘I was so drunk the other night, that I …’ tales now. Are you with me here? I loved them when I was your age. Hell, I was probably telling them most of the them, because I was a sloppy, pathetic drunk, but I had a big old smile on my face when I was falling all over your tables, and I was usually the only one laughing when all your drinks crashed around me. Why were people so disgusted with me, because sloppy drunks aren’t funny in the present tense. They’re kind of sad and pathetic in the present. I didn’t care about any of that at the time. I was having a blast, and I was feeling good. He knows what I’m talking about. High five? Air high five? No? First date? Ok, well, he knows alcohol makes us feel better, even if he doesn’t want to shout loud and proud … stupid, yeah, but better. We love to hear about alcohol stories from the past, because we love to hear about stupid people doing stupid things … if it’s from the past. Some of us are old and boring now, because we’ve learned our lessons, but our stories, the one’s we try to frame in a serious way to teach lessons, they’re knee-slapping-hilarious. If we’ve learned our lesson, it sort of gives us all a pass to laugh, because the guy telling the story is all clean and sober now. What if I told you I’m still quite the drunk? What if I told you I’m tanked right now, as a matter of fact, and I’m working on my tolerance level, so I can drink you under the table? Not funny?

“How did that start? How did that almost universal ‘drink you under the table’ challenge catch on?” Barry asked the audience. “I think the modern incarnation in the United States tradition started in the Old West. We romanticize the Old West now, but if you’ve ever studied it to any degree, one word comes to mind: boring. Boring and grueling. The primary jobs in the Old West were either farming or mining. You could also be a blacksmith, a lawman, a teacher, a prostitute, or a bar owner or banker. All of those jobs, except maybe the teacher, involved consuming massive amounts of alcohol either because it was part of your job, or because it was so boring or grueling that you needed alcohol at the end of the day just to convince yourself that you should go back to your miserable existence tomorrow. They didn’t have the internet, TV, or even books. Books, their sole source of entertainment, were so scarce that most families had the book. The book was called the family book, and everyone had to share the family book, or read it aloud, and they usually had enormous families so that the children could help out on the farm. The book was often some compilation of Shakespeare’s greatest plays or The Bible. They also had little in the way of transportation. If you were wealthy enough to own a horse, you were usually limited to traveling to and from town, and that could take hours depending on your location. So, when the twelve hour day of farming was over, and you couldn’t travel, and you couldn’t read the book, because one of your thirteen brothers or sisters had it, you drank and played cards. And anyone who has played cards, a serious game of cards, knows the rule. You can’t just play cards for an hour or so, especially if you’re lucky enough to win a couple hands. It’s an insult to everyone at the table. You have to give the other guys a chance to win their money back, and that can take hours, five to six hours. So, what do you do in those five to six hours, you drink, and if you drink enough for long enough, even that can get boring, and when your sole source of entertainment gets boring, what do you do? Anyone? Anyone? Drinking games and contests. And contests. That’s right. The act of consuming more alcohol defines your character, and the starting gun for these contests is, “I can put your ass under the table.” 

“I was really clicking with this woman in that manner that men and women sometimes click. We all know that moment when a conversation with the opposite sex clicks just past harmonious enjoyment to hormonal. Nothing we say is half as intelligent or as funny as we think it is when this happens, but we’re both in the zone. While she and I were in this meticulously balanced aphrodisiacal, nearly anatomical, part of the conversation, she drops it on me, ‘I might be a ninety-pound woman, but I can put your ass under the table.’ Why? Where the hell did that come from? I should’ve given her a: ‘I don’t give a crap. I’m sure that you can drink more alcohol than me, and I don’t give a crap.’ We can’t say that though, because we’ve trained one another to accept that these moments define our character, and we can’t give up the dream that we’re the Clint Eastwood, John Wayne character in this production. We’re not the supporting actors who revere the main character. We’re the confident, she-doesn’t-know-who-she’s-messing-with Clint Eastwood character.    

“I was tempted to play this stupid game with more than just this one woman. I’d have to check my ledger, but I’m pretty sure women have challenged me as often, if not more than men. They think that just because I’m staggering and slurring my words after three beers, they can take me, and you know what they’re right. I have always had the tolerance of a sixteen-year-old girl who hasn’t tried alcohol before. No matter how often I drank, it never translated to a greater tolerance. If a guy challenges me to a drinking contest, I say no thank you fine gentleman. That’s usually not enough, because I’ve usually done something to make this guy challenge me. It’s so stupid. For some reason, they need you in a supine position with unconditional surrender in your heart. You’re going to put me under the table, you’re superior, and … and what else you want? You’re the better man, how about that? Is that enough? Whatever I have to say to avoid drinking whatever the hell a man challenges me to drink, I’m going to say. I truly don’t care what some guy, I’m never going to see again, thinks of my drinking tolerance. It’s different when a woman challenges you though, it’s tough. Even if you’re not attracted to the woman, it’s tough. It’s tough, in general, for any guy to say no to a woman. 

“And then there’s Bob. Bob. I got along with Bob. He was a nice guy, deferential, and all that. Bob showed us all the roadmap to becoming Clint Eastwood. It involved drinking massive amounts of alcohol, massive, my-brain-is-probably-half-gone amounts of alcohol to increase the tolerance level. Everyone knew a Bob, back in the day. The Bob I knew was the man when it came to drinking. Someone said he put beer in his Cheerios. Did anyone ever actually do this? I can’t count how many times I heard that such and such was such an alcoholic that he put beer in his Cheerios. I don’t know if anyone ever did this, or if Bob did it, but Bob was our king of the hill, top of the heap, an ‘A’ number one drinker. It didn’t matter what the drink was, Bob could put you under the table. When we spoke of Bob, we did so with reverence. We townspeople whispered tales of the legend of Bob in the hopes that Bob would not hear us and become so enraged that he might challenge us to a drinking game, because Bob could, repeat it with me now, drink twenty beers without even getting a buzz. I will now allow for an obligatory moment of silence to allow you to gasp. I think it’s a rule or something that we’re supposed to gasp here and consider all the ways in which Bob is one of our betters.

“Every culture had a Bob. In Ancient Greece, Bob was the smartest philosopher in the cave; Bob was the greatest gladiator known to man in Rome; and the Spanish Bob was the greatest matador in the ring. When we all came here, we decided to give up on all that junk, because they’re all so hard and time-consuming. We’d much rather commit our lives to destroying as many brain cells as we can. We’d much rather celebrate and venerate a Bob who can drink people under tables. If someone vouches for us and says, “Don’t challenge Bob, he’ll put you under the table,” that’s probably one of the top 100 compliments we Americans can say about another. 

“If the bar is our arena, Bob taught me one crucial element to defeating an opponent in drinking contests, stats. What’s more satisfying than actually defeating an opponent in drinking contests, or any contest, drinking or not? Anybody? Anybody??” Barry asked the audience. “Intimidating an opponent from even daring to challenge us. Bob had his twenty beers-without-a-buzz stat line, and everyone knew it. If you didn’t know it, we told you, warned you. Don’t mess with Bob. He’ll put you under the table. But I don’t have stats, you say, I have the tolerance level of a sixteen-year-old who’s never drank a beer before. How do we normal people, who don’t put beer in our Cheerios, intimidate someone from challenging us? Get some stats and make them up if you have to, because very very few will call you out on it. My encounter with Bob taught me that stats silence the mob. I never challenged Bob’s reign, because Bob’s twenty beers without even getting a buzz stat line intimidated me, because anyone can say I’ll put you under the table, but stats prove that you are so capable of it that no one will dare challenge you. 

“I used to have a 150 I.Q.,” I told this ninety-pound woman, “but I’ve dropped down to a ninety-seven.” Then I gave her one of these intimidating looks,” Barry said glaring at the audience with raised eyebrows. “It was one of those Clint Eastwood, quietly confident raised eyebrows. The raised eyebrow asks us to ask ourself, ‘Do you who you’re messing with here?’ She asked how an I.Q. score mattered, and I said, “I’ve destroyed more brain cells than everyone in this whole bar put together, and if you think you can put me under the table, sweet mama, you got another thing coming.” I thought of dropping my improvised I.Q. score to the mildly impaired or delayed levels, but I realized that that would probably do more harm than good, so I decided to go from some gifted or very advanced level to just a tad below average, and it worked. Now, she didn’t want to date me after that revelation, but she didn’t go anywhere near trying to drink me under the table either. She was intimidated by my stats.  

“I never had Bob stats, or any other kind of stats, but I did my darndest to work on a tolerance level. I didn’t drink the massive amounts of alcohol I did for the expressed purpose of increasing my tolerance level, but it would’ve been a nice byproduct. It never happened for me though, and this aspect of my life comes with a big old asterisk. At the bottom of that page, is a short paragraph that reads, “I don’t care. I have a number of character deficiencies, missed opportunities, and things I wished I did sooner and better. If I had a time machine I would go back and try to fix all of them, except for my ability to consume massive amounts of alcohol.”

“Whatever problems I may have had with alcohol, I had my high school buddy to thank. I don’t blame him, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t have to drink, I could’ve made other friends, but Lou was so well-schooled, and so gifted in the art of persuasion that I fell in line. He and I didn’t drink all the time. We played sports every chance we could. We watched sports, read about sports, and talked about sports when we weren’t playing it or watching it. Sports is so compelling, because it’s a natural, adrenaline high. Competing against your fellow man, and defeating them in what they practice at as hard as you do is an adrenaline rush to adrenaline junkies. The one negative element to sports is that you can’t play them all the time, so what do adrenaline junkies do when they can’t play? They do drugs, they drink, they gamble, or whatever they can find to try to replicate that high. 

“When Lou and I drank, we put that stuff away! We didn’t consider ourselves alcoholics, of course, because we only drank on weekends, at parties. Alcoholics, to our mind, were people who drank alone, because they either enjoyed the taste, the high, or the combination thereof. We didn’t drink, because we liked the taste. We drank alcohol as a social lubricant to unlock those incredibly fun personalities that only come out at night. We drank what we could afford, and the stuff we could afford was the kind of alcohol that we had to force down until we couldn’t taste it anymore.

“I don’t know if the term binge-drinking was invented in those years, but if it was, we never heard about it. When we did, and we went through the bullet points, we were like check, check, check. Woops! We were party fellas. 

“Where Lou and I parted ways was his desire to see to it that others got hammered too. I didn’t really care if others drank, and I didn’t understand his obsession with it. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to drink alone, and I never did, but I didn’t really care too much if you knew when to say when. Lou did, and he was so skilled at his trademarked brand of peer-pressure that he should’ve probably considered putting a college course together. He could’ve called it Killing Them Softly 101. He didn’t mush us in the manner mushers will in the Iditarod with those kissy sounds. Lou’s mush words were, “Drink!” and “Drink gawdamnit!” and he considered me the international pace car of his parties. If Barry doesn’t get hammered quick, no one else will, or so he feared, and Lou feared that if we didn’t all get hammered quickly, we could, could end up talking about deep thoughts and feelings. To further prevent this, he refused any requests to play Pink Floyd at his parties. He liked Pink Floyd, in casual moments, and in his car? But Parties? Drinking parties? “Nope, Pink Floyd leads to thinking. It causes deep conversations.” 

“Don’t think! Drink!” would be the first thing Lou wrote on that college chalkboard, and, I know, they don’t have chalkboards anymore, but he would probably have those words displayed behind him in some manner, for his Killing Them Softly 101 lectures. “Don’t think! Drink!” He’d say pounding each word with his professorial pointing stick. “It’s what you say loud and proud, if you want your party to be considered a success.” 

“If you’re a proper host, you’ll work the room, asking them, ‘How much have you had to drink so far?’ And don’t believe what they say, check. Ask to see their bottle in a polite, interrogatory manner. Tell them you’re just curious. “Let me see your bottle, Barry?” Then, when they show you, you not only condemn him, but his mother for ever giving birth to him, and whatever the hell he drove in on. “What are we doing here tonight, Barry? Drink. Drink gawdamnit!” We’re to say that as if we’re disgusted by their pace, and we’re always disgusted by their pace. Never satisfied. That’s vital. Focus your condemnation on someone who can take it, and the weaker ones will fall in line to avoid your condemnations.

“Your drink of choice should be whatever drink gets your party goers get so hammered that the fun portion of your party only lasts about a half an hour. If you do it right, that half hour will be the only thing anyone remembers anyway. You might want to refrain from confrontationally shouting “Drink!” in their faces when they’re drinking the hard liquor that you two fifteen-year-olds found in old, aged decanters in his parent’s basement. We grew up hearing that alcohol gets better with age. They vintage right? It turns out that that depends on how they’re stored. Yeah, so that bourbon your parents housed in decanters, in some dark, dank closet in the corner of a basement no one has opened for thirty years might not be vintage. They might’ve been fermenting, and some fermenting processes can kill you. “Rock on!” the fifteen-year-old says when they’re downing eleven shots of fermented bourbon in a little over two hours. The proper host should know that if that happens, their party goers will probably learn less about hooking up and fighting, and more about creating interesting murals on your walls with projectile vomit.”  

“Who loves to drink!” Barry asked the audience. “Let me hear you!”

Chances Are You’re a Lot Like Me and My Life with Alcohol

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Chances are if you were lower middle-class, Irish, and Catholic, and you grew up in a Midwestern city in the late 70’s/early 80’s, you were immersed in a culture of booze. Every man I knew had his drink of choice in the 70’s, and his bar to drink it in. They were hard-working, lifelong Kennedy Democrats who would just as soon knock your block off than engage in a socioeconomic discussion on the differences of the Carter agenda and the Reagan agenda. Drinking was more socially accepted back then, and drinking is what every adult I knew did.

alcoholChances are if you were an adult in this era, your parents inherited a Depression-era mindset from their parents and they had some form of involvement in war, be it World War II, Korea, or even Vietnam. Chances are your parent wasn’t much of a talker, or if the occasional yarn escaped, it had nothing to with anything sentimental, or personal, in the manner a modern day, Facebook testimonial might. Chances are they blanched at the suggestion that they were a hero, or that they were a member of America’s “Greatest Generation”. Chances are they were humble about their heroic efforts to save the world, and they didn’t want their exploits discussed, but they were just as silent about the pain they knew. The idea of psychological trauma, otherwise known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, would be discussed during their era, but most true men poo pooed such discussions in closed quarters. Chances are they dealt with everything they saw, and everything they experienced quietly and internally, and in the only way they could deal with all this without going insane was in the company of some container of alcohol that allowed them to forget what haunted them … if only for a couple hours. Chances are they accidentally passed this legacy on to you.

Chances are if you were an adult in this era, your home came equipped with a fully stocked bar, a mirror around that bar that had some bourbon colored leafs on it, and a wagon wheel table, or some other loud furnishings that distracted the eye from the otherwise lower middle class furnishings of your home.

Chances are if you were a woman, and a wife in this era, your tale of the tape scorecard involved hosting abilities. For a good hostess of this era, the question wasn’t “Do you want a drink?” it was “What do you drink?” or “What can I do you for?,” or “What’s your flavor neighbor?” Those questions were for good hostesses who didn’t know their guests’ drink of choice, but most great hostesses already knew all that. Most great hostesses knew the kids’ names, what type of soda they drank, and the perfect form of entertainment to keep the kids away from the men. I remember one particular hostess, a wife named Jean, had Rondo at her bar. Rondo! How could she know that was my drink of choice? She was an excellent hostess.

Chances are your family had a George somewhere in the outer reaches of your family. Georges were regular pop ins. Pop ins, in the 70’s, were frequent and irregular. Pop ins provided some notice, some of the times, but for the most part a great hostess had to be prepared for a George to pop in at any time. It was a crucial checkmark on a hostesses’ list. Who was George? George was Johnny Walker Black dry. My mother innocently served George Johnny Walker Black on ice once. Once. Some of the times, once is all it takes. It would be the shame that loomed over our family for many a year. George was polite about it. He allowed his drink to sit silently on the table before him while speaking of other, more pressing matters. When he was asked why he wasn’t indulging in the fruits of my father’s labor, George simply said, “I prefer it dry.” My mother scurried about emptying his glass to prepare him a glass that was dry. My dad couldn’t look at George. He saved his scorn for my mother. George, for his part, said nothing. He was polite, and he silently drank it dry, but the damage was done.

George was a World War II and Korean, War Hero. He was a golden gloves boxing champion, and he was the top John Deere salesman in his district so many times that it would be more illustrative to point out how many years he didn’t win the award. He eventually became an independent business owner who carved out a niche in the crowded furniture market of our city, but I wouldn’t know any of that for decades. I only knew him as Johnny Walker Black dry.

Chances are if you were a Catholic, Irish boy of this era, you were not permitted to have an objective view of John F. Kennedy. We had pictures and portraits of two men in my household: Jesus and JFK. One of the first methods through which a young male could get a foothold on an identity in my household, through rebellion, was to criticize JFK. It was the family shame. You could criticize Notre Dame Football in my house, you could criticize the Cornhuskers, and you could even criticize the Catholic Church when Dad was good and loaded, but God help you if you claimed that JFK might not be Mount Rushmore material. There were numerous fights on this topic, in our house, that ended with the concession: “If you insist on popping off in such a manner, keep it in the family.” I wasn’t to embarrass the family with my crazy, heretical ideas about JFK.

I would love to say that I stood proud atop this lonely hill, astride my verbal spears, but I was so young and so outnumbered that I questioned my stance. I questioned it so much that when confronted by a Spanish teacher –who was kind enough to give me a ride to school– with the question of who I thought was the greatest president of all time, I said “Kennedy.” I said this to avoid a fight, the subsequent fights, and all of the arguments that I endured prior to meeting the man. “You know I’m Cuban right?” he asked. I didn’t, and I must confess that I didn’t understand the implications of it, but I lied and said I did know that he was Cuban. “Did you know that I was a Cuban rebel of Castro?” I confessed that I didn’t. “Did you know that I am the oldest grandson of a former Cuban emperor, and that I was in a direct line of secession that Castro wanted obliterated? Did you know that we were abandoned by this man that you call the greatest president of all time in what is called the Bay of Pigs?” I said I didn’t. I was thoroughly humiliated, but I didn’t know why. I was eventually let off the hook, because I was young, and I didn’t know any better. “Pay more attention in History class…” this Spanish teacher told me. I didn’t know it at the time, but I needed a drink after all that. I would come to know that soon. I would come to realize that all of the uncomfortable moments of life could be eased out of sight, and out of mind, with a couple of good belts under my belt. I would learn that fun was always fifteen minutes away.

Chances are that if you grew up in this era, in a manner similar to mine, you learned that adulthood was chaotic and an awful responsibility. You got yourself a job. You hated this job, but every man had a job. You got yourself some kids, but kids were seen but not heard in this era. Every kid learned how to conduct themselves around adults, no matter how chaotically the adults acted. You got your quarters to play Pac-Man or “Rhinestone Cowboy” on the jukebox, and you stayed away from the adults and their imbibing.

You worried about everything that happened if you were an adult in this post-Depression, post WWII era, you developed worry lines, and every piece of advice you offered a kid from the next generation involved the word “awful”. You learned that alcohol was the escape from the awful pains that pained you, the awful life, and you indulged in her pleasures whenever you had the chance to escape it. I saw all of the ABC After School Specials, and their thematic horrors of alcohol abuse, but I rarely saw those horrors in my life. In my real life all the trials and tribulations, of the awful life, were fifteen minutes away– or however long it took you to get a couple of good belts under your belt– from being fun.

Chances are that through all the fun, however, you did see some chaos if you were a kid in this era. Chances are you witnessed some evidence that the lifestyle wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Chances are you witnessed one of your parents, most likely your Dad, in a compromising position. The women of this era usually comported themselves better. For the most part, all of the adults controlled their alcohol intake in public, but there were days when the awful responsibilities, of the awful job, in their awful life got to them, and they over indulged. Chances are they did something, in the throes of this abuse, that forever changed your perception of them, but chances are that didn’t outweigh the overall joy you saw procured from indulging.

Chances are you were already fully immersed in this lifestyle before any of the consequences of the lifestyle came to call on victims of the WWII generation. My dad’s generation didn’t qualify their love of alcohol. They drank, they got sauced, they got tanked, and they liked it! They got a few belts under their belt, and they felt better about the post WWII, Korea and Vietnam life they lived. It was their way to escape thinking about The Depression that their parents taught them, and the lessons Hitler taught them, and to escape the fact that the U.S. had more issues than they knew growing up. It was their way of creating an alternative universe that escaped all politics– both national and personal. They had never heard of cirrhosis of the liver, no one spoke about the horrors of drunk driving, and they didn’t gauge the chaotic effects alcohol could have on the mind and the family, until we were all already immersed in the provocative folklore that we took from the lifestyle. Chances are they didn’t discuss the horrors of the lifestyle, because they didn’t see them, until it was much too late for most of us.

Chances are you were probably immersed in the lifestyle before you were ready for such discussions anyway. I know I was. I know I took from the examples of what they did, versus what they eventually said. I knew I couldn’t handle my liquor, and I still can’t, but I defined adulthood as one drenched in alcohol and lots of talking. The talk was always uninhibited, slightly loony, jovial and non-stop. If something offensive was said, during this talk, you were to ignore it. “That was the beer talking.” It was a get-out-of-jail free card to say whatever you wanted to say whenever you wanted to say it.

Chances are once you were ready to immerse yourself in that lifestyle, you had that party that defined who you were and what you were about to do in life. Mine occurred at the hands of a guy named Lou. The summary of Lou’s fifteen year old philosophy was, life sucks, life is boring, let’s drink. “I don’t want to hear your philosophies of life,” he said, “I want to get plastered.” When I suggested to Lou that I loved music that was heavily influenced by the strange, complicated chords of Bohemian Rhapsody, he said, “‘F’ that stuff!  The stuff you listen to isn’t party rock! If we’re going to get women involved, we got to get the Crue, Kiss, Ratt, and The Beastie Boys involved.” Lou was all about the testosterone. He liked to fight, he liked to have fun, he liked football, and he liked to have relations with women. It was the 4F society of a fifteen-year-old’s world.

Chances are if you drank this early in life, you didn’t have a way for getting alcohol. Chances are you drank anything you could get your hands on. Chances are you drank beer that you wouldn’t touch today, but if you couldn’t get that beer, you found an exotic liquor that you hoped would launch you past all those preparatory stages of adulthood to adulthood. Drinking a high-powered drink, like bourbon, was like stepping onto a high powered escalator that transported one to adulthood. If you were a lot like me, chances are you were an eager student to the specifics on how to drink … If you wanted to know how to enjoy the ride properly. You learned how to hold a drink, when to drink a drink, and how to chase it for minimal damage and maximum effect.

Chances are if you were a naïve, young Irish, Catholic boy from the Midwest, you had a Lou in your life. “We have alcohol,” Lou said. He informed me of this in a somewhat guarded manner that suggested that this wasn’t just any liquor, it was emergency liquor. It was liquor that shouldn’t be approached lightly. But this wasn’t just any ordinary night, this was a night that would have girls in it. If this didn’t qualify as an emergency night, no night would. “Girls don’t want to sit around and talk,” Lou said. “Girls want to get plastered. Girls want to party with guys who know how to party.” If it had been any other, ordinary night, where we couldn’t get alcohol, we would’ve sat in Lou’s basement and watched his Betamax collection of nude scenes from Hollywood’s glitterati.

Chances are you were a raging ball of insecurities and hormones, at fifteen, and you believed massive amounts of alcohol would provide you some cover. I know we did. I know we decided to break the emergency glass on Lou’s parents’ liquor to make something happen on “girls” night. That’s what we wanted, more than anything else, we wanted something to happen. We wanted to be fun, and with our fifteen-year-old, Catholic, and Midwestern mindsets, we feared we didn’t have much of a knowledge base, so we decided that alcohol would provide us some cover. “Okay, but I’m not going to raid the liquor cabinet,” Lou said. “After my cousin raided it a number of times, my parents got hip to the water in the bottle trick to keeping alcohol bottles filled. We do have decanters though.” Lou’s parents were the owners of a liquor store, so there was always plenty of alcohol in their house. The trick was how were we going to get to this alcohol without their knowledge?

Chances are if you were a naïve, young Irish, Catholic boy, born into the lifestyle of alcohol you said, “Decanters?!” with a gleam in your eye. “Let’s see them!” you said.

“I have no idea how old they are, but they’re old,” Lou said. He opened the closet door to reveal an array of elaborate decanters lined up in their own compartments. They had never been opened, and they had never been touched as far as Lou knew. “They’re, at least, as old as we are,” he informed me.

Chances are you saw decanters like these your whole life, and you probably viewed them in the manner Hobbits viewed Gandalf. “What kind of alcohol are they?” I asked believing there was an elixir in those decanters that would reveal things about life to me that my alcoholic forbears knew for a generation. He twisted the bottle around to read the label. “Bourbon!” He cringed. I didn’t know if bourbon was more potent than scotch or whiskey, and to be quite frank I still don’t. I’m sure that it’s all dependent on the brand, the amount of proof listed on the bottle, and the year it was produced. I made a mistake on the latter when I said, “Alcohol doesn’t go bad with age. It gets better. It becomes vintage.”

Chances are you knew as little about alcohol as I did, but you provided cover for this lack of knowledge with such little nuggets of information you had picked up over the years. Plus, you were willing to do whatever you had to do to entertain girls. Lou knew as little about alcohol as I did, but we both knew that an emergency night that called for emergency procedures. Dawn was coming over, after all. Dawn. Dawn was only thirteen, but she had a woman’s body, and she had one of those sultry, horse, Lauren Bacall voices that would melt a man’s loins, not to mention what they did to a fifteen-year-old’s ball of raging hormones. Dawn had a vacant expression above a cut, strong jawline, beneath flowery blonde hair. She loved to wear swimsuits all the time, even though she wasn’t going swimming, or that’s how I remember it anyway.

Chances are if you had a Dawn in your young life, you were willing to flip all of the emergency triggers necessary to entertain her. If you could get her to laugh, just once, you could play with that for a couple months, if not years. If she found something you said intelligent, or provocative, that could be your lone definition throughout your teens. Even having a Dawn look at you, was worth a couple swigs off the worst drink you ever put to my mouth. Lou seemed to gain his mantle effortlessly. I had to drink enough liquid courage to even open my mouth for five seconds. She was that good looking. I wanted to be entertaining in the manner my Dad, and George, and Francis, and Sam were entertaining when they drank. I’m not sure if it was the first time I ever drank, but it was the first time I drank with girls around. It was my first foray into the 4F club, and I was only fifteen minutes away from fun.

Chances are when you took your first drink, it was absolutely awful. Beer was awful and hard liquor was absolutely terrible, but chances are that didn’t matter to you. Chances are you thought that there was something important involved in you taking that drink. Whether it was achieving a different personality, a heightened awareness, or advancing to adulthood in some manner you couldn’t put your finger on, chances are you decided that you would acquire a taste for it, if it killed you. I decided I would be Tommy Lee, downing this whole, fricking bottle before a drum kit if I had to. I would be entertaining and lively. I wouldn’t engage them in my fifteen year old philosophy. I wouldn’t wax nostalgic on the beauty of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. I would rock out and get plastered and be entertaining.

Chances are some girl, at some point in your life, called you boring. Chances are you didn’t know how to be entertaining to girls. If that’s all true with you, and you had the opportunity I did to be entertaining through alcohol, chances are you overdid it. If a girl like Dawn would laugh at something you said after one shot of alcohol, imagine what she would think of you after two, or three, or eleven shots. I got so out of hand, at one point, I began sneaking other people’s drinks. Another girl at the party, a girl named Rhonda, took one girly smidgen and decided that this wasn’t for her. For me, drinking this drink was like diving into an extremely cold pool. It was shocking and breathtakingly bad, but once I got it into my system, I figured my body would acclimate itself. I began sneaking Rhonda’s drink. When it was my turn to drink, if I missed a quarter shot for example, I downed that muther. It would only be revealed to me later that all of the other people in the place, took smidgens and put the drink behind them. Even if I knew this, I doubt it would’ve slowed me. I was there to enter the 4F club, I was there to get tanked, and this was my fifteen minutes of fun. I didn’t care that by some estimates I downed ten to eleven shots in this, my first drinking experience. This was more about entering a spirituality of drink than it was about being responsible or having a polite, responsible time. I was fifteen and I wanted to rock out.

Chances are that if you had a night like this, as your first drinking experience, you don’t remember a whole lot. I remember Dawn did a seductive striptease dance, but I missed most of that(!) Why God(?!) I remember someone being somewhat-sort-of concerned with my well-being. I remember vomiting violently, and I remember waking. I did it all to elevate myself to another sphere of spirituality that I would remember for the rest of my life, and I didn’t remember much of it. I haven’t had a drink of bourbon, or anything and everything that smelled something like bourbon, since. I threw up in my mouth a little just thinking of that smell.

Chances are that you had some sort of confrontation in that first morning after, whether it was internal or not. My experience involved a verbal confrontation with Lou’s Mom. I was in on about half of that discussion, even though she was speaking directly to me. I’ve never done well in situations where someone called my sanity into question. When one looks at me with that look, and speaks to me in that accusatory manner, I usually shut down or leave the room rather than engage. The times when I engaged in such confrontations have never turned out well. “What the hell were you thinking?” was the theme of her questioning. I looked elsewhere. “This is forty year old bourbon,” she said. This caused one of my otherwise, carefree eyebrows to lift.

Chances are that something went through your head that suggested that she was angry because her little baby was growing up faster than she wanted, and she didn’t know how to deal with that fact. Chances are you used one of those few nuggets of information you had about alcohol against her. “Doesn’t alcohol get better with age?” I asked her.

“Better with age?” she asked rhetorically. “Wine does,” she said. “You’re thinking of wine….bourbon ferments,” she said. “Do you know what ferments means?” she asked me from a position that was as close to hysterical as she ever got. “You could’ve, and should’ve, died last night!” Her eyes were boring into me, attempting to wake me to the reality of what I’d just done. “You’re just lucky you threw it all up!” she said. This caused both of my eyebrows to lift before I left the room.

Chances are not all of your drinking experiences were as death-defying. Mine weren’t either, at least not to that level. There was one night, I screamed out the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody in the manner Wayne’s World had. I was drunk out of my mind, barely paying attention to the road, with a hot girl, named Adana Moore, in the passenger seat. I think there were five people in my car that night: Me, Lou, Adana, Madonna, and some other girl they jokingly called Donna. When the song ended, I began screaming the next song. I wanted people to know that I knew the entire A Night at the Opera album. I knew every lyric to every song on that album, and probably five other Queen albums. No one cared. They only wanted to feel like Wayne’s World for one night. I remember Adana Moore staring at me like I was a strange character, as I worked my way through the lyrics of the next song, and the next, until I felt I proved that I would continue to do it even with her looking at me. Then, once she looked away, I felt stupid and stopped.

Chances are if you knew a Lou, you knew a guy that had a formula to getting chicks to do things that were totally foreign to you. I envied him for it. He was skilled at talking to women about stupid stuff. He wasn’t a phony guy, but he knew how to turn on the phony factor better than most people I know. He liked to say he had a gift for it, and he did. He liked to call this suave character he created The Louer. The Louer was an alter-ego Lou turned on when the ladies came around, and the ladies loved this self-effacing braggadocious character. I couldn’t compete with Lou on the Louer’s turf, so I decided to go down the opposite road. I decided I would be a complicated, artistic individual, but the problem was I had no artistic talents at the time. I listened to complicated music, or what I thought was complicated music back then, and I brooded. I thought this was artistic. I rarely spoke, unless spoken to. I offered some clipped responses, and I tried to be ironically and sardonically funny. Whatever the case was, I wasn’t into impressing the girls in the ways of the Louer.

If you knew a Lou, chances are you knew a guy who could flip a Louer lever to get the ladies undressed. I would not lower myself to such a point where a girl would dictate to me how I was to act to entertain them. I would remain true to my artistic convictions, even if most people didn’t care one way or another. I would not entertain them in a fashion I considered demeaning. I would be funny, but I would be funny on my terms. I would have fun, but that would be fun that I considered fun. In truth, I couldn’t be entertaining, and fun, in the manner Lou was entertaining and fun, but we made a good team. If the Louer was David Lee Roth, I was Eddie Vedder before anyone had heard of Eddie Vedder. This isn’t to say that I was sad. I was happy and fun, but I didn’t have a whole lot of material back then. Lou didn’t either, but he was much better at concealing this fact than I was when he was the Louer.

Chances are, if you’re anything like me, you reached a point where you realized you could not handle your liquor. I would say this to all of my future co-workers, friends, and family at any social function I attended. At one point, I thought of having a T-shirt made that said this, just to save all the time it took me to convince those around me that it’s not a good idea to give me hard alcohol. “Don’t feed the bear,” I told them in a joking manner that I hoped would address the matter with humor. I knew this made me less of a man, and that “that woman over there can outdrink you.” That’s fine, I said. I’ll bet I have a better jump shot than her, I’ll bet I can conjugate a verb faster than her, and I’ll bet I can name more Civil War generals than she can. I didn’t care that I could do any of these things better than her, just like I didn’t care that she could drink me under the table.

Chances are that such convictions didn’t last throughout your drinking life. Chances are you didn’t care when a fella called you out, but when you hung out with that cute girl you had been dying to hang out with confront you with these facets of your drinking life, you folded like a house of cards. You may have told her of your weakness, but chances are that didn’t matter to her, and chances are that meant a great deal to you. “Do you want me to be fun tonight, or do you want me to drink this one drink that you feel builds some form of symbolic camaraderie?” ‘Drink it!’ she said. “Do you want me to tell half of you I love you and half of you I hate you?” ‘I don’t care drink it!’ “Do you want me to start walking down that hallway over there and fall into that family of six?” ‘Drink the shit!’ “Does it really matter that I put the same thing into my mouth at the same time that you do?” ‘YES! Drink the shit!!’ “At a certain point in the evening, I will become quiet, as I grow embarrassed that everything that comes out of my mouth is twisted and tied up in my alcohol saturated brain. You really want that?” YES! Drink the shit!! She was so cute, and she gave an inkling that she might be willing to get undressed for me at the end of the night, and she was losing patience with me and my stance. She was even becoming a little disgusted by my weakness, so I drank the shit and eventually ruined (like I knew I would!) any chances of seeing her cute, little body naked.

Chances are at some point in your life, you saw the hills of drinking. All drinkers know these hills. One hill can be a momentary, night by night scale of debauchery, that ends at a certain point where you’ve reached maximum altitude. Most drinkers know this hill, and they responsibly know when to say when. They know how to have fun and engage in a little chaos that eases the awful life a little, but they know that slaloming down the backside of a hill at breakneck speed has consequences. Some don’t. Some suspect that there’s an extra bit of fun that looms on the other side of the hill, and it can be achieved with one more drink. If you’re anything like me, you know what they call responsible drinkers who know how to navigate this hill, who know when to say when, because they know their limit: Party poopers. 

Chances are if you’re like me, you never sought this hill of life, so much as it was introduced to you. Chances are some of your friends suddenly stopped drinking, or they stopped seeing the necessity of having drink accompany every single get-together. I remember the first one. I remember seeing no beer in anyone’s hands, and thinking how unusual that was. What’s going on, I wondered. I remember the customary conversation that occurred on that occasion that I thought matched that which I had with my relatives at Thanksgiving. I remember thinking what a travesty it was. “We’re just going to sit here and talk?!” It wasn’t the hill for me, not yet, but it was a sign that things were changing among my friends. I was no longer in charge of festivities. I was no longer “respected” as the go-to guy for fun and frivolity. I was becoming a little sad. I was being face-planted into a hill that exposed me as a man who began to rely on a little drink as a Band-Aid to cover my wounds. I was becoming pathetic. I didn’t care. This wasn’t right. This was boring! Who’s in charge here? No one would answer. No one would look at me. It was the changing of the guard.

Chances are if you’re anything like me, you were one of the last to jump on board this ride. Chances are it took you years, if not decades, to realize that you didn’t need alcohol to be fun and exciting, and you chose Thanksgiving style talk as your new course of life. You began to learn about politics and work, and you began to engage in the awful life without it being made all the more awful through chaotic release.

Chances are you began to see all the life you missed at this point. Chances are people learned how to balance checkbooks, and fix their cars, and homes, and their plumbing. Chances are these people made meritorious advances in the workplace while you remained in your entry level position. Chances are they learned how to talk to women without having to have chemical courage involved. Chances are these people all learned things about life that you spent most of your life trying to avoid because they were square, unhip, nonalcoholic pursuits of life. Chances are this was never your intention in life, but it happened progressively night after night, hung-over morning after hung-over morning. Chances are you wasted a certain portion of your life in which you did achieve things, but not as much as you could’ve if you had been a little more focused.

Chances are if you led a life similar to mine, you started to recognize the compulsion you once had to be impulsive. Chances are that you once flew down roads at breakneck speeds to get to an 8pm party, so that you would have plenty of time to get blitzed by the time the heart of the party started. Chances are this started to become such a cyclical pattern of your life that these nights began to lose their fun. You experienced some Mt. McKinley nights of fun that you spent most of your life trying to recapture and top, until you had other Mt. Everest nights of fun. You escaped the pressures of the work life and the doldrums of the home life so often that those nights started to lose that crucial element of escapism. When this started happening, chances are you started to think about going home earlier, until you got there and wished you were out drinking again. You just wanted a fun life, and you were willing to do whatever it took to achieve it. You wanted to avoid reflection and get extremely chaotic for fifteen minutes of fun that helped you deal with the awful life, until you realized that your life was awful because of it. My dad and his friends had a hill, but they knew how to drink. Everyone does, it seems, to a point where it’s good, clean, adult fun. They didn’t know how to live, and either do you, you realize that day you truly face plant into that hill that informs you that you’ve been avoiding life for so long that you don’t know how to live.

Chances are you figured something out, somewhere along the line, and you’re happy now. Chances are something, or someone, happened in your life to clarify matters for you, and you’re no longer in the dark. Chances are you were a little late to the game, but you look back on your lifestyle with some regret and some fondness, but you’ve moved on, and you’re happier than you’ve ever been.